Annual report: Rebuilding Fracture Liaison Services to meet local patient need (12 January 2023)

Summary

The Fracture Liaison Service Database (FLS-DB) collects, measures and reports on the care provided by Fracture Liaison Services (FLSs). This annual report presents the results of secondary fracture prevention care received by patients aged 50 and older following a fragility fracture between January and December 2021.

Based on 70,384 patient records in 2021 (compared with 70,614 in 2019), it found that there has been a reduction in both case identification and assessment performance, but an improvement in treatment recommendation, monitoring and follow up, when comparing national data from 2021 with 2019.

Content

Key findings

• More patients were recommended anti-osteoporosis medication in 2021 than in 2019 (56% vs 52%), and
• The percentage of patients who were followed up within 16 weeks of their fragility fracture has increased from 41% in 2019 to 47% in 2021.
• This report also contains a number of recommendations for patients and carers, and for senior executive decision makers. This includes a call for the latter to hold a key stakeholder meeting to explore how local needs for fragility fracture patients can be met.